Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Digital Illustration for my new children's book

I've been working on illustrations for a book recently, using photoshop in a realist style that is very challenging, and something of a departure for me. The end result reminds me of Northern Renaissance paintings where every hairy imperfection is rendered faithfully. The composition and lighting both have to be strong to save the viewer from "texture overload". The end result is very engaging, though and invites scrutiny. That's why I've included a closeup version below.

The Basics

Production Designer, Art Director, Writer, Storyboard Artist.
Biography:
Fred Cline was born May 11, 1961 in Palo Alto, California. As a teenager, he was
introduced to film animation by Lee and Mary Blair, retired artist/
animators from his hometown of Santa Cruz, California. Fred
graduated from the film school of California Institute of the Arts
with a degree in Character Animation. From there he worked on
theatrical features at Walt Disney Feature Animation during the
revival boom of the studio initiated by the success of The Little
Mermaid in 1989. His debut as Art Director was the film, "Rover
Dangerfield" produced by Hyperion Entertainment and distributed by
Warner Bros. Fred Cline was the Production Designer on Bebe's Kids,
a Hyperion/Paramount film which, for the first time in a major
studio's theatrical release, featured a majority black character
cast. He was the Production Designer on the Paramount/Nickelodeon
film, "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius", the first theatrical computer
graphics animated feature to use inexpensive, off-the-shelf software
(Newtek's "Lightwave").